Cave Dwellers
Page 38
“That’s a wonderful picture of Clair. Have you seen him?”
“In Hamburg. February. Haydn’s Flute Concerto in D and something by Telemann, I can’t remember. I’ve got the program in a file somewhere. ‘Finished casework,’ probably.” He motioned for Oskar, who was currently known as something else, to have a seat. “That’s one good thing we did, anyway.”
“I think we did a number of good things,” Oskar said. “But Clair—how was he? Did you have a chance—”
“Reception after the concert. He doesn’t remember me, of course, but I dropped your name, and then he was happy to talk. Eager, actually. Lots of questions about everyone. I told him what I could.”
Oskar raised an eyebrow. “What did you say about—”
“Exactly what I’ve told you: I simply don’t know. It’s not the easiest thing, tracing a particular SS officer. In this case, the trail leads east—an Einsatzgruppe, then regular combat, then anti-partisan duty—and there it vanishes. I’d say the strong likelihood is that our friend von Ewigholz met a grisly end, and that he richly deserved it. But we’ll never know.”
Oskar nodded: another story, more unanswered questions, nothing to dwell on. He sat quietly for a while—he’d developed a certain talent for that—and Saxo guessed he was adjusting as people did when they came in, getting the feel of his own identity, slipping into himself as you would into an old, comfortable pair of shoes.
“How was the funeral?” Oskar asked finally.
The question, which Saxo had been dreading, came almost as a relief. “It was quiet. Orderly. Proper. She would’ve hated it. But also approved of it—you know what I mean? The music was lovely, though. You know they’ve left the Gedächtniskirche standing, what’s left of it. They’re building new wings on either side. The acoustics are odd—wooden scaffolding everywhere. Everything in Berlin is just being propped up somehow. Where does all that wood come from? Someone in Norway must be getting rich off this.”
Oskar smiled; he’d become a patient listener. “But how was the funeral, really? Who was there? What were people talking about? What was it like, going back?”
“It was damned awful, is how it really was. Who was there…well, who’s left? Guido was there—and you know what, she left him a painting. Something from up in the attic. He thinks she probably meant it as a joke, but it’s worth a small fortune; he’s planning to sell it and open a gallery in Munich, cater to the Yankee trade. What people were talking about—what does anybody ever talk about? Not the war, anything but that. And nobody’s sure what to make of the present, so it’s either the future or the past, the distant past. In this case, mostly the past. It was maudlin. The stories were funny, a lot of them, but the whole atmosphere was maudlin. Maybe that’s just Berlin.”
He felt himself growing agitated—this was why he’d feared the question in the first place. He stood up and walked to the window. Dusk was gathering. Out in the newborn orchard, apple blossoms glowed like paper stars.
“And you can’t go back. That world doesn’t exist anymore. She was the last of it, and now it’s over. She outlived Hitler! She outlived everyone. Even us, I sometimes think. But now there’s none of her sort of wit left in the world. Or that sort of kindness and strength. And no, I’m not being a tortured Romantic. I understand we’ve got our own sort of strength, that we’re building something new here. Look, have you seen the apple trees?”
Oskar ambled over to join him by the window. “Very nice,” he said. “How about Cissy?”
Saxo almost laughed. So it was good to talk, after all. He followed, in general, the rule that operatives should not be “mutually conscious,” but in this case, he’d make an exception. “Cissy’s doing well. She sends her love. She’s taken a job as a nurse in Vienna.”
“A nurse?”
“Private clinic, very select clientele. People come from all over. From the East Bloc, especially. They share their troubles with the understanding nurse. She has many interesting stories to tell.”
Oskar smiled. It was probably time to get down to business, but the two men stood there awhile longer, looking out over the field in the fading light. It felt as though there was something in the room between them—neither had put a word to it; maybe no such word existed—and as soon as one of them spoke, it would be gone.
“The apples were a mistake,” said Saxo, closing the book on all that. “They’ll never bear fruit. Not in this climate.”
“Yes, they will,” said Oskar. “You’re just feeling gloomy. You’re missing the Baroness.”
“Am I?”
Saxo wondered about this. Oskar wouldn’t lie to him, he supposed. “Tomorrow,” he said quietly, thinking of the frost. “We’ll wait and see. Maybe it will turn out all right.”
A Note About the Author
Richard Grant was born in Norfolk in 1952, attended the University of Virginia, and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He lives in Rockport, Maine, where he has been a contributing editor of Down East magazine, chaired the literature panel of the Maine Arts Commission and won a New England Press Award for his column in The Camden Herald.
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